Functional Category of Aspectuality in the Russian And English Languages

Abstract

This article studies functional and semantic Tense/Aspect complexes in Russian and English, focusing on their similarities and differences. In Russian, Tense-Aspect meanings of the verb forms correlate with the semantic components of Aktionsart, while in English both Imperfective and Perfective aspects of the verb semantics are realized by the constituent category of Tense/Aspect. The inner asymmetry of the verb forms and meanings is acknowledged for each of the contrastive languages, especially for the two languages compared. The material of the study is retrieved from grammar books and manuals and from literary text samples, principally concerns the use of Tense/Aspect forms of the Russian verb and the forms of the English Perfect. The novelty impact of the study is determined by focusing on the irregularity of the aspectual meanings of English Perfect forms and Tense/Aspect forms of the Russian verb, whereas they are mostly due to lexical meanings of the verbs influenced by intralinguistic specificities of the semantics of lexical indicators as well as mechanisms of communication on the whole. Aspectual meanings both for the Perfective and Imperfective Aspect in languages under comparison used to make up lexical and grammatical aspectual categorical complexes. In terms of Aspect and Tense, peculiarities are found as functional and semantic ones, highly dependent on the situation and context of communication, thus involving extralinguistic factors which also concern the extralinguistic environment of Tense/Aspect verbal forms in use. The comparison of functions and the semantics of Aspect and Aktionsart in the Russian language with those of English Perfect asymmetry is proved to emerge, being caused by cross-linguistic structural and typological differences, particularly, the existence or not the similar forms, their varying semantic load, analytical or synthetic tendencies and others. The asymmetry is especially vividly seen translation and lexicographic field to compose varying kinds of bilingual dictionaries.